Various sensors including photo sensors are known. Using these sensors, e.g., photo sensors, to facilitate control of lighting systems is also known. For example, a photo sensor may be used to facilitate control of a luminaire such that the luminaire is off during daylight hours and on during night time hours.
Typically these sensors are mounted to the luminaire in some fashion, however little effort has been devoted to insuring that these mounting arrangements are flexible. Thus, pointing or aiming the sensors in a proper direction, e.g., away from or toward a light source, can be overly burdensome and may necessitate at least a partial disassembly of the luminaire. Furthermore, if for any reason the direction that a sensor should be pointed changes, e.g., a street light is reoriented, the efforts including possibly disassembly and reassembly of the luminaire must be repeated. Even when these efforts may be viewed as straightforward even though time consuming, it can be still be problematic if not dangerous, e.g., when the technician is in an overhead hoist several feet above the ground at the street light level.
One known technique uses a receptacle mounted to a luminaire that is mated with a connector on a photo sensor with the connector serving to couple to signals from the photo sensor to control systems internal to the luminaire. This technique results in a fixed orientation for the photo sensor where it can be difficult to correct or modify the orientation. Furthermore when this socket arrangement is used in outdoor environments corrosion may lead to a failure of the photo sensor. Where the receptacle or photo sensor housing is secured via a threaded coupling to a luminaire, the threaded coupling can be loosened (un-screwed) in order to provide some flexibility in orientation. However, loosening the threaded coupling can result in an unsecured attachment that can degrade over time. Furthermore, these threaded couplings are notoriously poor at preventing water penetration.